HMS Captain 1870         

 

Information and Memories from Descendants (cont)
 

Up John Collier Peter Baldwin T G Beenham John Bremner Thomas Butcher C W Dyer J Ellis George Fisher Wilfred Glanville John Gribble Albert Grover George Habens Walter Hedger Robert Herd John Hermitage Tom W Ivey Thomas Kernan RJ Magawley William May Francis Merryman GH Payne Edmund Powell Alfred Ripley Anthony Spiller Arthur Tregaskiss John Walker

 

Thomas Butcher

My Great Great Grandfather was Thomas Butcher who was a stoker in the Royal Navy. He was born in 1826 and in 1853 married Mary Ann Elizabeth Johnson, they had nine children (one of whom died in infancy) so I imagine that after the tragedy life was hard for Mary Ann. His eldest son, also Thomas, followed him into the Navy but my Great Grandfather, James, opted for a quieter life on the railways.


I have found this family extremely difficult to track in censuses prior to 1871 but in that year Mary Ann was still living in or near the Woolwich Dockyard with her two eldest (Sarah Ann and Thomas) and two youngest (Emily and Robert)  children. Her third child (Eliza) was being trained for domestic service but I can find no trace of the other three - I shall keep looking!


I was interested to find that in 1881 at least two of his children were in orphanages. Robert, aged 11, was at the Royal Patriotic Asylum for Boys Wadsworth Common and Emily, aged 13, was at the Ham Common Orphan Home. I found this last especially interesting when I read in the 'Looking after the orphans' section that The Dowager Countess of Lichfield expressed her willingness to place one of the orphans in the National Children's Home, Ham Common. I doubt it was Emily as this was eleven years after the sinking although it is an interesting coincidence.

Pam Phelps - great-great-granddaughter